


Leaps and Bounds

by theladyscribe



Series: Tennessee [6]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-25
Updated: 2015-07-25
Packaged: 2018-04-10 10:09:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4387769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theladyscribe/pseuds/theladyscribe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>47 sentences chronicling the lives of Dean and Jo.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Leaps and Bounds

Child  
When Jo watched him out of the corner of her eye as they walked through the tall grass behind the barn, she liked to imagine that she could see the little boy that had once been Dean Winchester.

Drive  
Dean had driven across North America more times than he could count, getting lost on forgotten highways, but he always managed to find his way back to Iowa, back to what was beginning to look like home.

Learn  
If she asked nicely, Dean would take her out back and teach her some new sparring methods, and every once in a while, he’d even let her beat him.

Gentle  
Jo had thought Dean would be all rough movement and efficient strength during sex, like he was when hunting, but the only signs of his job were the calluses on his hands and the scars that mapped his body.

Cool  
Dean never really liked the cold because it reminded him too much of a winter by Lake Erie in Ohio, but when cold weather meant a night lying on a bed by the fireplace with Jo beside him, he began to find the snow tolerable again.

Believe  
They had fooled themselves into believing that the Demon was only after the gifted children, but when it attacked the Roadhouse it became clear to Dean that it was intent on destroying everything he had ever touched.

Hold  
The night after the fire, Jo simply held onto the hope that the boys would come before the demons did.

Attention  
Dean beat himself up for weeks; if only he’d been paying attention, maybe he would have noticed the warning signs that Sam was up to something, that Sam was thinking of running again.

Hide  
Sam had hidden well, which was why when he finally did call – leaving an area code – Dean thought that maybe he wanted to be found.

Soul  
They both lost parts of their souls the day that Sam disappeared, but neither of them noticed and neither really cared.

Command  
Dean had ignored Sam’s orders to stay away, so Jo had ignored them as well; as they drove back to Iowa from New York, she wished she had mutinied and kept Dean as far from that city as possible.

Harm  
“You never promised nothing bad would happen,” she whispered to him though she knew he was asleep, “only that you wouldn’t let it happen to me.”

Fool  
As he drove away from the Roadhouse, the Doobie Brothers played on the radio: _What seems to be is always better than nothing / And nothing at all keeps sending him somewhere back in her long ago where he can still believe there's a place in her life…_

Bother  
Jo had known it was only a matter of time before Dean would leave the Roadhouse after Sam disappeared – that didn’t bother her; what bothered her was that he left without her.

Wrong  
Somewhere around Bismarck, Dean finally convinced himself that leaving Jo in Ash’s capable hands was the right thing to do.

Goodbye  
After all those horrible unspoken goodbyes to friends (Sam) and family (Mom), Jo thought that saying goodbye to the Roadhouse would be easy, but it wasn’t.

Blur  
The months after were a blur for Dean, a smudge of blank emptiness as he wandered everywhere and nowhere, avoiding only Lawrence and Sioux City.

Shadow  
She tried to tell herself that it was better this way, that if Dean had stayed, she would always have been living in Sam’s shadow.

Ghost  
Sometimes Jo swore she could feel the feather-light touch of a hand brushing across her shoulders as she lined up a shot, but then she would turn, expecting someone (Dean), only to find nothing but empty space.

Never  
The nightmares rarely came when she slept with a warm body beside her; the nightmares had never come when that warm body was Dean.

Naked  
Dean had left most of his clothes at the Roadhouse and Jo knew that she should have just tossed them all out, but she took them with her, and sometimes after a night with another man, she’d wrap herself up in one of his flannel shirts and cry.

Wash  
She stayed with a red-haired Airforce pilot for a couple months, but he didn’t have half the passion Dean had.

Wall  
“ _The Wall_ ’s good,” Jo conceded, “But _Wish You Were Here_ has always been my favorite.”

Thousand  
He would never admit it, but even after a thousand nights – a thousand easy lays – he still couldn’t erase Jo’s face from his mind.

King  
The waitress – Kate – smiled at Dean and said, “The antique shop in the old King building has an apartment for rent above it, if you’re looking for a place to stay for a while.”

Sudden  
The guys told Dean that when he started working at Bonham’s Auto, it was amazing – all of a sudden, their clientele went from mostly male and fifty to mostly female and twenty-five.

Wait  
He surprised himself by waiting almost a month before he asked Kate out to dinner; he surprised himself even more when he realized that she was the first girl who didn’t make him think of Jo.

Book  
Once, on a whim, Jo booked a flight from Maine to Kansas City and drove down to Lawrence just on the off-chance that Dean would be there; he wasn’t, of course, but Missouri was, and she sent Jo back to Iowa.

History  
Nothing stood between them – nothing, that is, except the knowledge of a thousand years of heartache and brokenness.

Safe  
“It certainly wasn’t the safest job,” Dean admitted with a slight smirk, “but you’ve gotta admit, it sure beat pushing paper on a desk all day.”

Power  
Around midnight one night, the lights began to flicker and Jo bolted upright only to see the flash of lightning and hear a rolling crash of thunder as the rain beat against the roof.

Time  
It seemed to be the natural order of things that eventually Jo would find Dean back in her bed.

Picture  
They were the picture-perfect couple: He was tall and handsome and gentle, and she was the petite blonde girl who kept the house; no one ever noticed the harsh lines around their eyes or the sorrow lying just beneath their smiles.

Sing  
One weekend the two of them went down to Knoxville to watch a football game, and all the drive back, Jo tried to plug her ears so she couldn’t hear Dean’s dirty rendition of “Rocky Top.”

Last  
She didn’t doubt that they would get tired of this normalcy eventually, but Jo was going to enjoy the serenity while it lasted.

Need  
She shrugged and said, “I kept that forget-me-not necklace for as long as I could, but there was a shapeshifter in Colorado and I didn’t have any silver bullets.”

Young  
It was surprising how much younger Dean looked when they were out on the road; his smile was easier and the lines in his face seemed to fade more with each mile marker, and Jo made a promise to herself that even if they ever stopped somewhere permanently, they would take at least one roadtrip every year.

Mad  
She thought he would be mad or upset or something when she told him the news, but Dean’s first reaction was to pull her into his arms and kiss her.

Vision  
Dean had never told anyone – not even Sam – but he had once had dreams of having a house with a wife and kids and a real job, so when Jo told him she was pregnant he thought maybe some dreams were meant to come true.

Stop  
Dean had stopped everywhere that Jo had asked him to, including both Sioux City and Lawrence, and when he asked her where she wanted to have the baby, she answered immediately, “Tennessee.”

Name  
They argued over names for a while (Dean wanted to name her Layla or Vera Lynn or Dolly, but Jo refused to name their child after groupies), and then Jo suggested Zoey and Dean blinked and said, “That sounds like something Sam would’ve picked.”

Now  
There was Before, and there was After, and there was Between, and then, _then_ there was Zoey, and she was Now.

God  
Dean stopped believing in God after Sam disappeared, and it wasn’t until he held his little girl in his arms that he started believing again.

Precious  
The night Zoey turned six months old, both Dean and Jo sat wide awake in the salt ring around her crib with blessed shotguns and bated breath.

Eye  
His little girl had her mother’s bright golden curls and his smile, but the bright laughter in her eyes was something that had been uniquely Sam’s.

Motion  
The thing Dean loved most about Zoey was that she was constantly moving, asking questions and never satisfied with his answers; it reminded him of Sammy so much that it scared him just a little.

One  
They didn’t know it, but Dean and Jo both told Zoey the same bedtime story almost every night: “Once upon a time, there was a little boy named Sammy whose family loved him very much.”


End file.
